During Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee, the former fixer for Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) warned of violent consequences if DDT doesn’t get elected president. He said:

“I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”

DDT may be moving up the timeline. He began promoting violence at an August 2016 rally in North Carolina when he said that “the Second Amendment people” might have a way to stop Hillary Clinton “if she gets to pick her judges.” He continued his call for violence since he was inaugurated with his statement about “tough people” like “law enforcement, military, construction workers, Bikers for Trump,” adding that he hopes they stay peaceful. Since then he has used the same subtle statement, but he was much stronger in calling for violence in an interview with the far-right Breitbart website. Referring to the same “tough people” in talking about investigations into him, DDT added, “They don’t play it tough until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.” [Photo from a Bikers for Trump event at his Bedminster (NJ) golf resort on August 11, 2018; image by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images.]

The calls for violence go beyond promising to pay for his audience’s lawyers if they initiate violence against protesters to the point of claiming that he will order violence from armed military and allies to physically defend himself against “Democrats” who investigate him.

As the investigations accelerate, especially after the Democratic control of the House, DDT’s terror about investigations become more manifest, for example this morning’s tweet that “there should be no Mueller report.” DDT may also have made Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin afraid of him. In the past, Mnuchin has said that he will comply with the law if members of Congress legally request DDT’s tax returns. During a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee, Mnuchin added that “we will protect the president” to his earlier claim that he will “follow the law.” The two statements are opposite because the law states he will “furnish” the returns upon request of the committee’s chair.

Current White House Counsel Pat Cipollone has told Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) that two of DDT-associated attorneys, former White House Deputy Counsel Stefan Passantino and his personal attorney Sheri Dillon, won’t be available to the House Oversight Committee. Cummings said that the two attorneys “may have provided false information” about hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.

Cohen has given the House Intelligence Committee documents about DDT’s secret deal-making with Russia over a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow and returned to testify. The documents show edits to the false written statement he submitted to Congress in 2017 made by DDT’s lawyer Jay Sekulow, who encouraged Cohen to lie under oath. Cohen also claims that attorney Abbe Lowell, representing Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, had also reviewed his 2017 statements to Congress. Sekulow denied that DDT’s lawyers had either reviewed or changed Cohen’s earlier testimony. Cohen’s earlier testimony already implicated DDT in at least 11 separate felonies:

Lying to Mueller: Falsehoods in writing from DDT about his conversation with Roger Stone regarding the hacked emails.

Suborning Perjury: Orders to Cohen that he lie to Congress under oath about trying to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign and DDT’s personal lawyers who “reviewed and edited” Cohen’s congressional statement before submission, including the “length of time that the Trump Tower Moscow project stayed and remained alive.”

Campaign Finance Violations: DDT’s directive to organize hush-money payments during the campaign with evidence from a check signed by DDT for reimbursement of payout to Stormy Daniels.

Election Fraud: Hush-money payments to silence women and conceal DDT’s affairs from the voters that thwarted a fair election.

Insurance Fraud: DDT’s false claims to insurance companies that inflated the size of his assets in a ploy to reduce his premiums. [Visual on desktop]

Witness Tampering: DDT’s threatening intimidation of Cohen to “persuade” him from testifying against DDT.

Bank Fraud: DDT’s inflation of personal wealth while trying to borrow money from Deutsche Bank in a failed attempt to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014. (Cohen said that DDT almost doubled his statement of finances by claiming that putting his name on anything is worth $4 billion.)

Tax Fraud: DDT’s deflation of “assets to reduce his real estate taxes,” for example claiming that he claimed, for tax purposes, that the National Golf Club Jupiter in Florida was worth “no more than $5 million” when he valued it at over $50 million on his financial disclosure forms. (The New York Times’ investigation found DDT “participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud.”

Financial Disclosure: The conspiracy of false accounting entries of the Trump Organization by DDT’s failure to disclose his debt to Cohen for making the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, probably to conceal the reimbursement.

Misusing Charitable Funds: DDT’s use of his charity’s money to buy a painting of himself after driving up the bid and then keeping the painting.

And More Undisclosed Crimes: Criminal allegations from prosecutors for the Southern District of New York about additional lines of investigation.

The New York attorney general’s office subpoenaed Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank for financing records connected to four of DDT’s business projects in Washington, DC, Chicago, and outside as well as failure to buy the NFL Buffalo Bills in 2014. Michael Cohen, DDT’s former fixer, has suggested that DDT illegally inflated and deflated his personal wealth for gain. In 2011 and 2012, for example, DDT’s debt load may have seemed smaller on his Statements of Financial Condition because he omitted a Chicago hotel with a high debt. Fraud against financial institutions is fraudulent and one of the convictions for Paul Manafort and part of Cohen’s prison term.

Democrats in the House continued to terrify DDT, recently with the hire of a former Manhattan prosecutor who specialized in Russian organized crime. Daniel Goldman will be working for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) who is coordinating with House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) to investigate DDT’s relationship with Deutsche Bank which has paid multimillion-dollar penalties for working with Russian money launderers.

The Senate is also looking into DDT’s security clearances. After discovering that DDT overruled security clearances about 30 times, Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) are introducing the Integrity in Security Clearance Determinations Act to stop this abuse. Among the 30 are the clearances DDT gave to daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner after they failed FBI checks but politically retaliated against former CIA John Brennan by removing his clearance because Brennan criticized him.

The House must be doing the right things. Fox network, the same one that squashed the story about the Stormy Daniels affair before the 2016 election, is pushing to get rid of five of these investigations.

As Rafi Schwartz wrote, “It says a lot about the state of the country when the President of the United States can make a laudatory, if oblique, reference to having fascist goon squads commit violence on his behalf, and it’s not the biggest headline of the day.”

Republicans, including VP Mike Pence and Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, express “thoughts and prayers” after a white 46-year-old man killed at least 11 people and wounded another six at a synagogue in Pennsylvania. The killer was heard to shout “all Jews must die” during his slaughter and earlier posted on Gab, a social media source for alt-right activists and white nationalists, that the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), liked to bring “invaders in that kill our people.” He also wrote, “There is no #MAGA as long as there is a kike infestation.”

Dictator Donald Trump’s first statements (DDT) after the shootings criticized the synagogue for not having security guards and said that all churches and synagogues should have this armed “protection.” Later, the self-avowed “nationalist,” made a comment about being surprised that such an anti-Semitic act would happen in “this day and age,” perhaps after his staff recommended the statement. In 2017, DDT’s first year in office, anti-Semitic events increased almost 60 percent over the previous year, in the largest single-year increase on record and the second-highest number reported since these events were first tracked in 1979.

Having called for “unity” in the United States after bombs were sent to at least a dozen high-profile Democrats in the United States, DDT said after the Pennsylvania shooting that “something has to be done.” Yet he refuses to accept any responsibility for the pervasive conservative anger resulting in violence and blames the “fake news” despite his frequent targeting CNN and people who were sent explosives. DDT false attacked the first victim of the bombs, George Soros, by saying that he paid people on the caravan going from the Honduras to the United States. After the capture of the person suspected of sending the bombs, a white male U.S. citizen living in Florida, DDT whipped the crowd into changing “CNN Sucks!” at a rally, the same image on the suspect’s van.

DDT also accused Democrats of sending the bombs to make Republicans look bad and was annoyed that this domestic terrorism detracted from his Medicare drug price announcement, a campaign “promise” that he has been making for several years. DDT also told a black audience that Democrats had betrayed them and encouraged them to chant “Fake News!” and “Lock him up!” about Soros. Before the Pennsylvania shooting, DDT told reporters that he doesn’t plan to tone down his rhetoric, saying, “I could really tone it up.” He described the suspect accused of sending the pipe bombs as “a person that preferred me over others.” The person who “preferred” DDT lived with his mother because he had lost his home in a “dodgy” (aka illegal) foreclosure by the bank owned by Steve Mnuchin, DDT’s Treasury Secretary.

Only ten days ago, a Montana audience cheered DDT when he talked about GOP Rep. Greg Gianforte who had physically assaulted a Guardian reporter the night before Gianforte’s election: “Any guy that can do a body slam — he’s my guy.” (The physically attacked reporter is considering suing Gianforte after the representative started lying to the newspaper about what happened.) Since people called on DDT to stop the hateful rhetoric, he has said such things at his rallies as “I’m gonna be nice tonight” before he reverts to his showman behavior to reassure his base that he isn’t changing.

Tony Schwartz, DDT’s ghostwriter (and probably real author) of his 1987 autobiography, said that DDT has a “fascination of violence”; his two obsessions are football and boxing. Schwartz added, “He loved black people to commit violence against other black people—while he watched.” DDT just didn’t want to be in the middle of the violence. Rage is the reason behind this obsession, according to Schwartz:

“He’s in the business of being aggrieved, and he’s using that in these 10, 12 days leading up to the midterms in trying to bring it out in all the people that are possibly going to vote on the Republican side in this next phase.”

The mailed bombs and today’s killings in Pennsylvania are two more examples of how DDT is pushing unstable people toward increasing levels of violence. Neuroscientist Bobby Azarian pointed out that DDT and his far-right propaganda media targets “mentally vulnerable people with their heated and divisive rhetoric, as well as their outlandish conspiracy theories. These theories describe nefarious plots by the ‘deep state,’ a cabal of Left-wing politicians and powerful co-conspirators that is trying to undermine President Trump, while running child sex trafficking rings on the side.” Perpetrators who follow DDT’s direction don’t need to be “delusional”; they only need to be “suggestible.” A trigger pushes them over the edge, and DDT refuses to take any responsibility while fueling more hatred and copycat attacks from his supporters. People criticizing DDT put their lives at risk.

With Election Day only 10 days away, self-identified “nationalist” DDT upped the ante this past week with his press releases and comments to reporters by declaring “Congressional Democrats Want to Take Money from Hardworking Americans to Fund Failed Socialist Policies” and other fake claims about Democrats:

Make Venezuela is the “model.”

Destroy the economy.

Support Karl Marx.

Give undocumented immigrants free cars.

Turn America “into a giant sanctuary for criminal aliens and the MS-13 killers.”

“Impose socialism” on America.

“Take away your health care.” [The first item on the GOP Senate agenda after midterms is to repeal healthcare.]

Destroy Americas borders.

Turn the nation over to “deadly drugs and ruthless gangs.”

Destroy the military.

“Launch an assault” on the sovereignty of our country and the safety of citizens.

DDT also described non-existent “riots” at his campaign rallies and falsely accuses “mobs” of “rioting” against “sanctuary cities.” The real “mobs” that DDT doesn’t mention include those by the violent “Proud Boys,” supported by Republicans, who are beating up protesters and verbally assaulting Democrats such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (R-CA) who was in southern Florida for a campaign event.

DDT plans to deploy 800 military members to the border to illegally stop anyone from seeking asylum in the United States. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen promised they won’t shoot the members of the caravan—at least not right away. The border patrol may shoot them first. The National Patrol Council, the union representing BP agents, is featured in a new video, “Killing Free Speech,” including white nationalists and anti-Muslim extremists that the union has endorsed. Shown to agents throughout the country, the video describes Democrats as “dark and evil” and correlates gang rapes, Islam, and immigration. Also featured in the documentary are members of the Proud Boys, a white supremacist, misogynist, anti-Muslim hate group. It also attacks the mainstream media that “will stop at nothing to … demonize those who risk their lives protecting America’s borders.” The video’s director created the same message in “Killing Europe” and plans “Killing Canada.”

The union represents 90 percent of the almost 20,000 BP agents in the field. Within 100 miles of any U.S. border, agents can enter private property, set up highway checkpoints, and profile people for stopping, questioning, and detaining them. That “constitution-free zone” contains 65.3 percent of the U.S. population.

Over 500 employees of the border patrol agency have been charged with drug trafficking, accepting bribes, and other crimes during 2016 and 2017, according to a report from Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Human Resource Management and its Office of Professional Responsibility. Some of the most heinous of these crimes in 2018 include the ten-year agent accused of killing four women and assaulting a fifth, two of them U.S. citizens, in two weeks and the BP agent who shot and killed a 19-year-old woman illegally crossing the border near Laredo.

VP Mike Pence, self-identified fundamentalist Christian, continues to follow the liar-in-chief to be vice-liar-in-chief. With no evidence, he cites the apprehension of “more than 10 terrorists or suspected terrorists” at the U.S. southern border and claims that “people of Middle Eastern descent” (aka Muslims) could be on the caravan still 1,000 miles from the United States. DHS says that most people stopped from entering the country try to come on airplanes, and being on a watch list isn’t the same as being a terrorism suspect. Pence’s religion is to win votes for GOP candidates through fear-mongering from lying.

In a display of how little concern DDT has for the slaughtered people at the Pennsylvania synagogue, he proceeded with a campaign rally today, using the excuse that his friend, Dick Grasso, opened the New York Stock Exchange the day after the 9/11 attacks. But he didn’t: the exchange was closed for three trading days after the disaster. When he asked his audience if he could “tone it down a bit,” they yelled in disapproval. He continued to stir up the crowd to yell “Lock her up” about Hillary Clinton and then denigrated the conservatives who don’t support him, calling them “very stupid” and “losers.” A member of the crowd called out “Pocahontas” when he referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and he false said she had “no Indian blood.” He added, “I can’t call her Pocahontas anymore, but I think I will anyway. Do you mind?” The crowd continued to cheer every one of DDT’s personal attacks. DDT continues to incite violence.

August 5, 2018

Pope Francis has changed Catholic Church teaching to fully reject the death penalty, but Texas allows the bible to sentence someone to death. After a juror showed that his religious source recommends death for a person who kills someone with an instrument of iron, Khristian Oliver was sentenced to death and executed. Despite First Amendment separation of church and state, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Thirty-five other offenses qualify for the death penalty in the bible including these:

Cursing Parents

Striking Parents

Not Obeying Parents by Boys

Premarital Sex by Girls

Rebellion against Law

Worshipping Any God but Yahweh

Being a Witch

Loose Daughters of Clergy

Girls Raped within the City Limits

Blasphemers

Anyone Trying to Deconvert Yahweh Worshipers

Working on the Sabbath

Kidnapping

Men Lying with Men

Adulterers

Men Lying with Beasts and Beasts Lying with Men

Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) has surely committed at least five offenses that could lead to the biblical death penalty.

Former CIA intelligence official, Michael Scheuer, is best-selling author, historian, essayist, public speaker, TV commentator, Ron Paul’s adviser, secessionist advocate, Christian nationalist, Vladimir Putin apologist, and terrorism expert. He is also married to a senior intelligence official, Alfreda Frances Bikowsky who was referenced as “Queen of Torture” in 2014, and frequently appears on a radio program with close ties to DDT, his family, and his administration, a show directing people to Scheuer’s blog that calls for “well-armed citizens who voted for Trump” to “kill those seeking to impose tyranny.” That classification includes journalists, activists, pundits, abortion providers, Republican and Democratic elected officials, federal judges, law professors, FBI agents, intelligence officials and Justice Department officials, and “all who support them.” Scheuer calls them all “expendables.” To “end the tyranny of their elected representatives,” people should “eliminate” them by stockpiling guns and ammunition.

Scheuer appears often on John Fredericks Radio as either commentator or host—more than 25 times in 18 months– spreading the ultra far-right messages of justifying Putin’s seizure of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine, conspiracy theories about Robert Mueller’s investigation, the illegitimacy of the U.S. government, and NATO and Israel as “cancers.” John Fredericks, also CNN commentator and member of DDT’s 2020 presidential advisory board, has interviewed DDT eight times on his program, and many of DDT’s inner circle have done the same, one at least 23 times. DDT paid Fredericks’ company $34,000 for “placed media.”

From his home, Scheuer Skypes with the Russian state TV outlet RT and disparages the CIA as corrupt, incompetent and bloated with too many “immigrants, Hispanics, transgender people, and homosexuals.” In his view, too many members of the Jewish community support Israel. He shocked even Glenn Beck by calling for a “civil war” and the glorification of assassins, listing President Obama and then-British Prime Minister David Cameron as tyrants, ostensibly to be assassinated. Scheuer said, “At some point, when push comes to shove, you kill people and get them out of the way.” Georgetown University decided to not renew Scheuer’s two classes, despite his protests.

Designated for “elimination” on Scheuer’s list are TV journalists Shepard Smith, Jake Tapper, Jim Acosta, and Rachel Maddow and commentators Bill Kristol and Joe Scarborough. Other names are Attorneys General Jeff Sessions, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch; former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein; special counsel Robert Mueller and prosecutors on his team; former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Former NSA Director Michael Hayden, current and former and current FBI directors James Comey and Christopher Wray; former CIA Director John Brennan; former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell; former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and other “work-a-day FBI agents,” as well as the staff of the U.S. Department of Justice. The list goes on with elected officials, former presidential aides, and various billionaires. It seems to be endless and he called on DDT to “slay the republic’s domestic enemies now.” Recently he wrote about the “sheer, nay, utter joy and satisfaction to be derived from beholding great piles of dead U.S.-citizen tyrants.”

Close associates of the U.S. president and senior members of his administration support and promote a man who call for mass murder by armed rebels. And white supremacists are planning a rally in Washington, D.C. on August 11-12 to celebrate the violence a year earlier at Charlottesville (VA).

Religious people like to claim that people require religion—preferably Christianity—to be moral. The world of DDT, however, is constantly proving this belief to be wrong. Fundamentalist Christians, dismayed by DDT’s immorality, say that they have to rationalize away some of his behavior and keep the parts that they want. The same is true with the contents of the bible.

Fundamentalists reject fantasy, calling it morally wrong. They often keeping their children from reading books about magic, but the bible is filled with magical occurrences. Most fundamentalists following the biblical interpretations of their clergy instead of reading the document themselves. Religious policies come from church leaders; i.e., not eating meat on Friday isn’t found in the bible. Instead it was developed as a political ploy by the church.

According to research, people have their personal moral compass and then find biblical passages that match their beliefs. If they change their mind about issues, they still claim that God agrees with them—like their acceptance of DDT’s adultery and sexual abuse. A study indicates that the part of a person’s brain activated by personal beliefs is the same as thinking about their perception of God’s beliefs. Thinking about other people’s beliefs activates another part of the brain.

The source of individual morals is complicated, probably a blend of genetics and acculturalization. Atheists get their morals from the same place as Christians—heredity and cultural influence. That’s why atheists don’t score differently than religious people in solving moral dilemmas. Religion is a system of faith and worship of a supernatural power, separate from the moral difference between right and wrong. Christians can easily murder, operate in a corrupt fashion, beat their wives, or commit other crimes. If they don’t break the law themselves, they justify others who do.

Professors Rodney Hessinger and Kristen Toby have an explanation of why fundamentalist Christians support DDT. The preservation of patriarchy that he exhibits has its background in biblical male dominance and superiority that was rooted in the South. Evangelicals have long overlooked the crossing of moral lines as women were forced to ignore their culture’s adultery and acceptance of slavery. Even now, fundamentalist women justify slavery by claiming that slaves were fed, housed, and given health care. With their persecution complex, fundamentalists identify with DDT because he is the “outcast,” the “outsider,” as they believe themselves to be. They believe that all criticisms of DDT are also criticisms of themselves. Fundamentalist religious leaders continually commit adultery, but followers accept this as part of their religion with many leaders keeping their positions.

Thus evangelicals will continue to follow DDT with their violence and patriarchy, believing in the cry to “Make America Great Again,” working for that mythical white nation of centuries ago when immigrants from Europe openly committed genocide.

When Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) told White House counsel Don McGahn last June to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller last June, McGahn said he would resign rather than follow that direction. In July, DDT said that he would fire Mueller if he investigated DDT’s finances. DDT called this information “fake news,” but even the Fox network sort of agreed.

DDT’s mistake of the week: DDT has gone back to his position from last June that he is “100 percent” willing to testify to Robert Mueller “under oath” and is even looking forward to the interview. Then he added, “subject to my lawyers” who quashed the idea. Ty Cobb tried to cover for DDT by saying that he was in a hurry and only intended to say that he would meet with Mueller.

The government reopened last Monday after 33 members of the Democratic caucus bought Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) line of his “intention” to address the DACA issue either in the next spending bill (due by February) of after that. McConnell has a history of not keeping his promises, and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) doesn’t put anything on the floor that can’t be passed with only Republicans. DDT is holding out for $25 billion for his wall, and the House bill would criminalize and deport any Dreamer who makes less than 125 percent of the poverty level. The reopening reauthorized children’s insurance for another six years, but it ignored funding that ended at the end of September for the Maternal Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Programs (MIECHV), Community Health Centers, and opioid funding as well disaster relief. DDT sneered at the Democrats for keeping the government open when he tweeted, “Schumer and the Dems caved.” He may be cheering early: the next deadline is in only 13 days.

Mick Mulvaney, maybe acting director of the consumer agency, said, “I found out for the first time last night that the person who technically shuts the government down is me, which is kind of cool.” When a representative in 2013, Mulvaney tried to continue a government shutdown when lawmakers had a deal to end it. Mulvaney’s “new mission” will protect companies from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) originally designed to protect consumers. His first action is to permit payday lenders to prey on their borrowers.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin drove the already weak dollar down, ten percent lower since January 2017, by saying that it is is good for the U.S. because other countries get exports cheaper. Imports to the U.S. become expensive, and buying U.S. equities and U.S. bonds is less desirable.

DDT’s trade war with the world is on, according to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross after DDT slapped tariffs on solar panel and washing machine imports. “There won’t be a trade war,” DDT said. The first 1.2 million imported washers have a 20-percent tariff followed by 50 percent on all imports for two years because of a request from Whirlpool. Solar panel components get a 30-percent tariff, and the solar installation industry predicts a loss of 23,000 jobs each year and a slow-down on the renewable energy movement that DDT hates.

During a Q&A session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, DDT attacked the media, saying:

“It wasn’t until I became a politician that I realized how nasty, how mean, how vicious, and how fake the press can be.”

People booed and jeered. That was after they laughed at him for bragging about his business abilities. Initially, the crowd groaned when WEF Chair Klaus Schwab introduced DDT:

“I’m aware that your strong leadership is open to misconceptions and interpretation so it is so essential for us in the room to listen directly to you.”

Russia:

Dutch media warned the U.S. that a Russian hacker group Cozy Bear “launched an attack on the Democratic Party in the United States in 2015.”

The fiancé of Russian colluder, George Papadopoulos, said he, like John Dean of Watergate, will provide valuable information to Robert Mueller’s investigation.

After DDT fired James Comey as FBI director, he interviewed Andrew McCabe for the position and asked him who he voted for in the presidential election.

Republicans are using emails as a shiny distraction from Russian collusion, messages between two FBI officials who shared political perspectives while having an affair during DDT’s campaign. They criticized far more people than DDT—Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, etc.—but the GOP demanded missing texts between December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017, from software upgrade affecting “thousands of FBI devices. Republicans haven’t made any comments since these were found.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), chairman of House Oversight Committee, claimed that a text message, sent as a joke, revealed a “secret society.” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) added that “an informant” told Congress about “a group holding secret meetings off-site,” he backtracked because he had no evidence after embarrassing media coverage and being called “the senator who cried wolf.”

The smoke and mirrors GOP distraction from DDT’s collusion with Russia is so complex that reading an entire article is necessary. And more craziness.

The Senate voted 55-43 to confirm former pharmaceutical executive Alex Azar as health secretary, guaranteeing that drug prices will continue to rapidly escalate.

The Senate Judiciary Committee sent 17 DDT nominations to the Senate floor, including Thomas Farr who lied to the committee during his hearing about his participation in intimidating black voters during Jesse Helms’s campaign for the 1992 North Carolina Senate seat. Also passed by GOP acclaim was Eric Dreiband to direct the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Earlier he gave testimony against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and opposed LGBTQ rights. When Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) asked opponents if nominees should be disqualified because of causes represented as a lawyer, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said the evaluation of conduct as private citizens is such that future litigants would be apprehensive to come before the judges. Charles Goodwin and Holly Lou Teeter, both receiving the ABA “not qualified” rating, were also advanced for confirmation.

Wendy Vitter was one of a dozen new judicial nominations. Currently counsel for the Roman Catholic church of the New Orleans archdiocese, she may be best known for defending her husband when he confessed to being a client of the “D.C. Madam.”

Taylor Weyeneth, 24, will leave his senior position of DDT’s Office of National Drug Control Policy after six months after the media publicized his inexperience and “misrepresentation” of his résumés. He was one of three ONDCP employees who was designated as “essential” during the recent shutdown.

(Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Sexual Misconduct:

After 150 women testified against Larry Nassar at his sentencing hearing, the judge added 40 to 175 years in prison to his existing 60-year term. Michigan State University’s 13-year president Lou Anna Simon resigned just ahead of a legislative bill calling for her removal.

For decades, casino mogul and RNC finance chair Steve Wynn (right) committed acts of sexual misconduct, according to a Wall Street Journal article. These actions include a $7.5 million settlement after forcing a woman to have sex with him in 2005. He blames his ex-wife for the allegations, but a number of women have supported the accusations.

Rep. Pat Meehan (R-PA), removed from the House Ethics Committee after it became publicly known that he used taxpayer money to settle a sexual harassment complaint with an aide, will not be running for re-election after he prayed about his situation. He denied any harassment but said that that they were “soul mates” and verbally attacked her when she told him she had a serious partner. Meehan blamed her and the vote on the Affordable Care Act for his actions.

Herriman High School officialscensored a student newspaper article regarding the firing of a teacher, possibly for sexual misconduct, so the students published a website that included the article. A vice-principal had previously approved the article. The Supreme Court case Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier permits school censorship of newspapers. The students’ article. Herriman is a small city of over 21,000 in north-central Utah.

Despite DDT’s claim in his inaugural address that “American carnage … stops right now” and AG Jeff Sessions’ claim that the mission has been accomplished, violence is increasing. The national murder rate increased by one percent in the first half of 2017—the time that Sessions addressed. Eleven school shootings in the first 26 days of 2018 include three this week, one of them killing two students. The 52 LGBTQ single-victim hate killings in 2017 is an 86-percent increase from 2016, making 2017 the deadliest year since compilation of these homicides. The actual number of LGBTQ killings is most likely larger because murders may be misclassified and misgendered.

DDT continues to incite people to violence. Brandon Griesemer was arrested after at least 22 threatening calls to CNN’s headquarters toward its cast, anti-Semitic remarks, racial slurs against employees, and the statement that he’s going “to gun you all down” with the claim that he has a whole team and “more guns than you.” In the past, DDT has tweeted videos of himself body-slamming and punching CNN, a “Trump Train” running over CNN, and himself stepping on CNN as an insect.

October 17, 2016

Rampant claims of a “rigged” election are igniting Trump supporters as their leader is struggling to avoid press coverage about his sexual assaults. Donald Trump started raving about how Philadelphia’s inner city (aka black voters) needed to be monitored last summer when Hillary Clinton was ahead, and he’s returned to this mantra. Calls for Republicans (aka white men) to watch these polls have been followed by Rudy Giuliani’s declaration that more dead people “vote for Democrats rather than Republicans.” He added that the GOP members rarely cheat because “they don’t control the inner cities the way Democrats do.”

Donald Trump’s diversion seems to be working: 41 percent of the people in the United States that he’s right about the rigged election. That includes three-fourths of all Republicans. I’m one of those people who agree. Here’s why.

Let’s start with Florida where absentee ballots are thrown out if the voter’s signature is not an exact match with the one on file. Fortunately, a court in Tallahassee declared this policy unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker decried the “crazy quilt of conflicting and diverging procedures” that allowed local officials who “lack formal handwriting-comparison training or education” to decide whose signature was valid and whose ballot should be thrown away. He called the practice “obscene” and then lambasted the state for not offering voters to fix their questioned ballots. Walker wrote:

“The State of Florida has categorically disenfranchised thousands of voters arguably for no reason other than they have poor handwriting or their handwriting has changed over time. It is illogical, irrational, and patently bizarre for the State of Florida to withhold the opportunity to cure from mis-matched signature voters while providing that same opportunity to no-signature voters. In doing so, the State of Florida has categorically disenfranchised thousands of voters arguably for no reason other than they have poor handwriting or their handwriting has changed over time.”

Of the 2.3 million people who voted by mail in Florida, one percent of their ballots were rejected. That’s 230,000 voters who were disenfranchised, a case of the state rigging the election. A study found that Democrats were much more likely to have rejected ballots than Republicans.

Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, tried to block other people from registering by his refusal to extend voter-registration deadlines after Hurricane Matthew recently disturbed the process, killing 41 people and causing massive flooding. Judges blocked his refusal as they did in Georgia and North Carolina.

Prior to the 2008 election, states had had no restrictive voting laws for almost a half century, primarily because the Voting Rights Act of 1965 blocked states most likely to have these unconstitutional laws preventing certain people from voting. Within an hour after the Supreme Court overturned the key part of this act in 2013, states, beginning with Texas, began to pass a wave of laws with the sole purpose of decreasing votes for Democrats. Courts have pushed back against unconstitutional anti-voting laws, but it’s been a continual struggle. This source gives specifics about which states have these punitive laws, but generally they can be found in the South and Midwest. This link also provides the newest information. If you are confused by reading this, can you imagine being in one of these states and trying to figure out how to vote?!

Of the 50 states in the nation, 17 tried to use their new restrictive voting laws for the first presidential election during the current year. Recent court rulings rolled that number back to 14 because courts blocked some measures in Georgia, North Carolina, and North Dakota. Texas’ laws were mitigated but remain more restrictive than before the Supreme Court ruling. Almost half the states create burdens for people to vote, primarily opposing women, minorities, and poor people, in the current election. States most likely to pass these restrictions are the ones with the highest black turnout in 2008, the greatest Hispanic population growth between 2000 and 2010, and/or those covered by the Voting Rights Act.

The worst voter restriction laws are strict photo ID requirement that allow only a short list of government-issued photo IDs to be used as identification. During the first election after Texas passed its law, 600,000 registered voters lacked the correct ID, and 11 percent of people nation-wide do not have these IDs. Texas required that the government-issued ID have exactly the same name as birth certificates, something highly unlikely for married women. Without the ID, voters could cast provisional ballots but must return to the polls within a few days with the mandated photo ID. Ten states are in courts facing lawsuits regarding the laws; six of these are specifically about photo ID laws.

GOP consultant Carter Wrenn admitted what everyone knows about the new laws—that the purpose is to decrease Democratic votes. “Of course, it’s political,” he said. “Why else would you do it?” As he said, Republicans want to protect their majority. The GOP would have left early voting if blacks voted Republican, according to Wrenn. He also explained that the GOP had to use the excuse of voter fraud to get away with their restrictive laws. That’s the voter fraud of 35 total credible allegations between 2000 and 2014 for over 800 million ballots in federal elections and hundreds of millions more ballots in elections within states.

Wisconsin, where GOP Gov. Scott Walker owns the state Supreme Court, is a classic case of Republicans rigging the vote. Last summer, a federal judge struck down early voting restrictions and other blocks to voting and ordered that IDPP voting receipts be issued “promptly” to those seeking them. People were still given the wrong information about obtaining photo IDs. Others were refused the receipts although they brought the necessary documents.

One serious case of voter rigging in another red state occurred during the Arizona March primary. The number of polling places in Democratic Maricopa County was cut from 400 in 2008 to 60 in 2016 for a population of over four million people. Locations were small, some with as few as six voting booths and half these left empty by poll workers to keep people in long lines outside from coming in to vote. Some people waited over six hours, and people with disabilities couldn’t cast ballots because no accommodations had been made for them.

A poll worker reported that the system tried to force her to give GOP ballots to Democratic voters, supposedly because the system failed to identify registered voters if the information was entered in lower-case letters. The party affiliation had also been tampered with before the election, changing registration from Democrat to Republican. Over 2,000 calls to the Secretary of State office went unanswered on the day of voting. The Arizona legislature decided to shut down the hearing on these issues before people waiting for hours could speak, and at least one person was arrested. This week a judge allowed the state law that invalidated ballots cast in the wrong precinct.

Serious vote rigging began after the 2010 GOP landslide in state legislatures. Because of district gerrymandering to benefit Republican candidates, Republicans had a 234-201 majority in the 2012 election for the U.S. House of Representatives although Democrats received 1.4 million more votes. The current GOP majority in the House is 247-188, the largest since 1928. One theory is that 226 seats are safely GOP, 193 should go to Democrats, and the remaining 16 are in play. The House is held by 218 seats.

The electoral votes are equally rigged. Mitt Romney lost Pennsylvania in 2012, but he got 13 of the 18 congressional districts and nine by near double-digits. At this time, Pennsylvania allots all its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the state, but Republicans want to shift the state law so that a GOP loser can get more electoral votes for president.

All this “rigging” would benefit Republicans, but Trump’s call for people to protect him is being answered by threats of violence. Trump incessantly calls on Hillary Clinton to be thrown in jail, and his supporters threaten to “take her out” if she wins the presidency. The Kentucky governor has called for blood to be shed if necessary, and white supremacist groups, who look on Trump as their leader, are bringing back the traditions of Confederates after the Civil War who won elections through intimidation and violence.

Angry Trump supporters have threatened the Arizona Republic with killing its employees and burning down the building after the longtime conservative newspaper endorsed Clinton, the first Democrat in its history. One called invoked the name of Don Bolles, the newspaper’s investigative reporter killed by a car bomb 40 years ago, and said that more reporters would be blown up.

As Trump ratchets up his hateful rhetoric, such threats will cross the country. Trump wants fear. Life is bad enough with him as a candidate; it would be unbearable with him as president.

[Note: If you live in Oregon, tomorrow—October 18—is the last day that you can register to vote in the November 8 election. And because we live in a state with all mail-in voting, you can vote in peace: you don’t have to face the militia at the polls who will try to keep you from voting.]

October 3, 2014

Whenever the NRA and the gun manufactures face the threat of gun restriction laws after a major event, they claim that it’s not the fault of the guns. If the government did something about the mentally ill, the whole problem would be solved. But who are the mentally ill and what can be done.

Laura L. Hayes wrote about her experiences working with the mentally ill thirty years ago. She described “one sweet, diminutive, elderly patient” who stabbed a person in a supermarket. At her commitment hearing, the patient explained that she had been hearing voices that told her not to hurt the man in front of her in line. Yet she had become so angry because he had over 10 items in the express lane that she couldn’t keep from stabbing him. In the hospital, her medications stabilized her, but at home she didn’t take them.

The stabbing didn’t come from mental illness. It was from the inability to control anger. Violence comes from people who lack the skills to manage their anger, and most homicides are committed by people who have a history of violence. A summary of studies on murder and prior record of violence show that between 80 and 90 percent of murders had prior police records as compared to 15 percent of the general population. A study of domestic murders shows that 46 percent of the perpetrators had a restraining order against them when they killed the person or persons. Family murders are preceded by prior domestic violence more than 90 percent of the time.

Paolo del Vecchio of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has said that only five percent of violence comes from people with mental illness. Seena Fazel’s 2009 study shows a slightly higher rate of violent crime by schizophrenics but almost entirely from alcohol and drug abuse. The MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study found that mentally ill people with no substance abuse problem are no more violent than other people in their community.

Anger comes from the primal fight-or-flight response. People stop thinking and react as if their lives depend on their actions. Fighting was useful for survival in our ancestors’ times, but it has become a problem in our current complex world. The angrier one is, the less one can think clearly. The abilities to negotiate, find a new perspective, or handle provocation disappear. The lack of those abilities transfers responses to repressed rage with no acceptable outlet. It usually comes from backgrounds in which adults repress anger or intimidate in a violent manner.

The anger culture in the country has developed into growing mass murder as well as violence toward children and spouses, rape, road rage, assault, and violent robberies. People who have intermittent explosive disorder (IED) tend to have been exposed to patterns of IED, often by parents who cannot control their anger. The disorder affects up to 5 percent of adults, or about 16 million Americans. The first episode of rage may occur in adolescence, about age 13 for males and age 19 for females.

People can be trained to balance the initial fight-or-flight response with the nervous system that returns the ability to reason. Some techniques include deep breathing, relaxation techniques, identification of warning cues, and listening skills that shift a person from emotional to more objective thinking.

One technique that has proved useful is mindfulness training. The incorporation of deep breathing, heightened attention to the internal state, and the acceptance of internal discomfort can reduce anxiety, depression, and stress. The goal is to observe thoughts without identifying with and acting on them. Dialectical behavior therapy incorporates these skills with instruction in distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.

IED doesn’t stand alone; it can lead to depression, anxiety, and alcohol or drug-abuse as well as coronary heart disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, arthritis, ulcers, headaches, and chronic pain.

IED may be diagnosed with blood tests. Two inflammation markers have been found in people diagnosed with IED but not in people with good mental health or other mental heal disorders. IED may initially be viewed as merely bad behavior, but “it has strong genetic and biomedical underpinnings,” according to Emil Coccaro, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago. About his study, he said, “This is a serious mental health condition that can and should be treated.”

The two markers of inflammation are C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukin-6 (IL-6). The liver produces CRP in response to an infection or injury to focus the immune system on dead or damaged cells. White blood cells secrete IL-6 to stimulate immune responses such as fever and inflammation as well as increasing production of CRP.

The study shows that “medications that reduce inflammation may also drive down aggression,” Coccaro said in a news release. Anti-inflammatories such as Celebrex, or even aspirin, might make a difference for those with IED. People with a biochemical and genetic predisposition for IED, at the drop of a pin could benefit from looking into treatment.

Diagnosis of IED includes a feeling of tremendous tension before the outburst, including tremors and head pressure, followed by a sense of relief. Afterwards, people feel their outbursts are justified but still suffer embarrassment and regret. Criteria evidencing IED are several anger-driven episodes showing failure to resist aggression and intentional destruction of property or assault on others or themselves. The violence is out of proportion to the stress.

IED affects more men than women and can be a particular problem in school. Children have negative feelings toward others, probably because of harsh punishments from parents, and believe that people are out to get them. Their way to protect themselves is through violence. Frequent discipline because of aggressive acts increases frustrations.

Adult IED sufferers’ inability to interact in social and professional environments leads to divorce and job loss which causes financial and legal problems. Road rage causes car accidents and, more and more commonly, assaults on other drivers.

A recent study of the military has discovered that almost 25 percent of almost 5,500 active-duty, non-deployed Army soldiers suffer from some form of behavioral disorders. About 80 percent of these (ADHD, IED, and substance abuse) existed before enlistment. IED is six times as high among soldiers as civilians.

The military largely depends on candidates to disclose their mental wellbeing histories. Between that system and the culture that does not see anger as a major problem, the violence will continue. The NRA and gun manufacturers refuse to recognize any problems in a person with IED carrying a loaded gun.

Perhaps the new discovery that IED may be caused by a physical condition can help identify people who are dangers to themselves and others. We need to address IED as a public health issue to reduce suicides and murders.